Re: vfork

Rogier Wolff (R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl)
Thu, 11 Nov 1999 09:58:17 +0100 (MET)

kernel@kvack.org wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, Ed Hall wrote:
>
> > As someone who has seen the hubris of numerous Unix vendors in assuming
> > that portability isn't their problem--especially when it comes to
> > documentation--it pains me when Linux folks take a similar tack. Looked
> > at from the perspective of someone coming to Linux from elsewhere in
> > the Unix world, your attitude looks downright hostile. Such attitudes
> > belong on Slashdot, not here.
>
> Don't take such opinions as representative of anyone other than the
> individual that posted it (the same applies to my comment, although I do
> think that people are generally not hostile to portability issues, rather
> merely uninformed). Personally, I try to avoid writing non-portable code,
> but the fact of the matter is that it's impossible to ensure that a piece
> of code will work properly on an architecture that it hasn't been tested
> on. That said, the fixes are usually pretty simple.

Right! While writing an application, before you know it, you're using
a system-specific feature or extension. If only manual pages would at
least tell me what's POSIX and what's a linux extension.

For example the "select" manpage for Linux is good in that respect:

> On Linux, timeout is modified to reflect the amount of time not
> slept; most other implementations do not do this. This causes
> problems both when Linux code which reads timeout is ported to other
> operating systems, and when code is ported to Linux that reuses a
> struct timeval for multiple selects in a loop without reinitializing
> it. Consider timeout to be undefined after select returns.

Roger.

-- 
** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 **
*-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --*
 "I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you."


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